Sunday, April 26, 2009

San Antonio Confidential

The Alamo--Where the Legend of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie Was Made!(Click to enlarge.)

Before we left San Antonio, we went back into the city to photograph its most famous landmark: The Alamo. The light wasn't the greatest, but this Texas sight lived up to expectation in terms of what I had in my mind's eye. The Alamo--or Mission San Antonio de Valero--was the site of a Spanish mission and home to missionaries and Indian converts in the 1700s. In the 1800s, the Spanish stationed soldiers there who called it Alamo, meaning cottonwood. To read more about the key role this site played in the battle for Texas independence, go here. And to see a few more ho-hum pictures of the Alamo, as well as some of the lovely spring flowers surrounding the mission, see the slideshow.

VJ: I can remember a little of that song, but I doubt I could pick it out on the piano...

"Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee. Greenest state in the land of the free. Raised in the woods so's he knew every tree. Kill't him a bear when he was only three. Davy! Davy Crockett. King of the Wild Frontier."

That's about all I can remember...

Cele: Road tripping definitely has two sides to it. On the one hand, you see some really cool stuff. On the other hand, you're in the car a lot. To do that, you have to travel with someone you enjoy.

I visited an old family friend in San Antonio a few years back. She's over 80 years old, and has had hip surgery that makes walking painful. But she took me on a tour to the Alamo. It was a quiet place, which made it hard to imagine the battle that took place there long ago.

Maya: Yeah, too bad about that damned Fiesta San Antonio the day before when the light would have been perfect. Oh well. You do what you can with what you've got, I guess.

Phoebe: I wish it had been a little quieter the day we were there, but it was teeming with people (see the previous reference to the fiesta.) Still, I agree, it was hard to imagine such a pivotal battle taking place in such a quiet venue.